Iranian TV airs 'confession' of 'spy for Israel'

Iranian state television airs alleged confessions of Iranian academic who was sentenced to death for spying for Israel.

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Elad Benari, 18/12/17 06:35

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Iranian state television on Sunday aired what it described as the confessions of an Iranian academic with Swedish residency who it said had provided information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists, Reuters reported.

The academic’s wife, speaking by telephone from Stockholm, said he had been forced by his interrogators to read the confession.

Iran’s Supreme Court last week upheld a death sentence against Ahmadreza Djalali, a doctor and lecturer at the Stockholm-based Karolinska Institute.

Djalali was arrested in Iran in April 2016 and later convicted of espionage and sentenced to death. He denied the charges.

In Sunday’s television report, according to Reuters, Djalali was linked to the assassination of four Iranian scientists between 2010 and 2012 that Tehran said was an Israeli attempt to sabotage its nuclear energy program.

Djalali said in the report that he had given the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad information about key nuclear scientists.

”They were showing me pictures of some people or satellite photos of nuclear facilities and were asking me to give them information about that,” Djalali said in the television report.

Vida Mehrannia, Djalali’s wife, said her husband had been forced to read a pre-agreed confession in front of the camera.

“After three months in solitary confinement, his interrogators told him that he would be released only if he reads from a text in front of the camera,” she told Reuters by telephone from Stockholm.

“My husband told me that they shouted at him each time he was saying something different from the text and stopped the filming,” Mehrannia added.

The film said Djalali had agreed to cooperate with Israel in return for money and residency of a European country.

The film also contained interviews with Majid Jamali Fashi, an Iranian athlete who was hanged in 2012 over the killings of the nuclear scientists. Djalali is the second person found guilty in the same case.

The Islamic Republic, which is notorious for its executions, has in the past executed individuals it claimed to be “spies” for both Israel and the U.S.

The network had links with the CIA, Israel and some neighboring Arab nations, Iran claimed.

In a previous incident, Iran executed Majid Jamali Fashi after convicting him of spying for the Mossad and of playing a key role in the January 2010 assassination of a top nuclear scientist in return for payment of $120,000.